Members of Congress Can Pay Sexual Harassment Settlements With Taxpayer Dollars, but That Could Change

Congress is finally getting its act together on sexual harassment. In what manyarecalling a response to the #MeToo movement, members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate agreed to a bipartisan deal that would provide for key reforms to the system for reporting and handling discrimination and sexual harassment allegations made against members of Congress.

According to The Washington Post, seven months of negotiations ended on Wednesday, December 12, with those involved saying the final legislation resulting from the deal will be passed before the end of the year. If that happens, it will mean that starting in January, members of Congress will no longer be allowed to use taxpayer money to pay settlements related to sexual harassment or retaliation claims.

“I feel great,” said Representative Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a major force behind the reforms. She told the San Francisco Chronicle that the new rules will ensure that Congress is “safe for women and men to work without fear of sexual harassment or retaliation.”

What exactly is in the bill? According to a breakdown from HuffPost, it includes several reforms intended to overhaul the reporting system on Capitol Hill, which currently mandates counseling, mandatory arbitration, and a 30-day “cooling off” period.

As reported by HuffPost, a strong reform bill passed the House in February, followed by a Senate bill in May that wasn’t as strong. HuffPost identified three things that had held up a compromise on the proposed bill, all of which were resolved on Wednesday.

The first was mandating that taxpayer money can’t go to sexual harassment or retaliation settlements anymore; the agreement will, however, still allow taxpayer money to go toward settling discrimination claims. The House had passed a provision for prohibiting the use of taxpayer money in settlements in its bill, but the Senate did not. Members of Congress will now have to handle their own expenses in sexual harassment and retaliation settlements. According to ABC News, Congress has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds settling sexual harassment claims “in recent years.” CNN reported in November 2017 that since the 1990s, the Congressional Office of Compliance paid $17 million in victim settlements for harassment, discrimination, and other claims.

The second point holding up negotiations was providing legal counsel to those who come forward with claims. Again, the House bill included this and the Senate left it out. Ultimately, the policy will now be different in the two chambers, as House staff will get legal help provided, but Senate staff won’t, according to HuffPost.

The third issue was the matter of mandatory impartial investigations at the beginning of any probe into claims. Once more, the House included it in their bill, but the Senate didn’t. That provision is reportedly going to be left off of the final bill.

“We believe this is a strong step towards creating a new standard in Congress that will set a positive example in our nation, but there is still more work to be done,” Speier said in a joint statement with House lawmakers. On Twitter, Speier pledged that after the next Congressional session starts in January, “we will pass legislation to require financial responsibility for discrimination claims.”

Speier, alongside representatives Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) and Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), was instrumental in the House bill’s passing. That bipartisan team’s Senate counterpart was helmed by senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who were the ones to announce that a deal had been reached Wednesday, according to ABC News.

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As noted by HuffPost, the bipartisan effort comes after years of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle facing allegations. The United States has a long history of political power players with similar claims made against them.